As part of a star-studded guest-laden show on Wednesday, Kevin Sheehan welcomed in DC’s own Scott Van Pelt to discuss the LIV/PGA merger, and SVP made it very clear what the perception is about the two sides joining forces:
“In the simplest terms, the PGA Tour took the money,” SVP said bluntly. “Trying to explain it all is such a difficult thing because there’s so much that’s not known from the players’ side, but the question is why they took the money.”
The most culpable person in the whole thing, to SVP, is PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, who Van Pelt intimated sold out the tour after chastising the very group he railed against a year ago.
“Jay Monahan, who went on TV last year and talked about 9/11 and said anyone on the LIV Tour was basically siding with that side and forbid anyone to go there, said yesterday that things change,” SVP said. “But why? What changed from a year ago when you were invoking 9/11 to say why you shouldn’t go into business with the people you’re now in business with? Is it because you didn’t want to keep going to court with them because the Saudi fund has so much more money? That’s what they did.”
The structure of the new entity that will oversee the PGA, LIV, and European PGA merger is seemingly set, although regardless of how it shakes out, it’s still bad business optics to SVP.
“What’s accurate there we don’t know, they’re the biggest investor, but clearly, neither side wants to go through discovery in court, and the massive costs associated with these lawsuits,” SVP said. “But the rhetoric couldn’t have been more pointed that these were bad people to be involved with, and now they’re involved to grow the game? That’s the biggest eye-roll to me.”
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“When all these guys took the money to go to LIV, good on you; I get that a lot of people turned it into blood money, but you’ve never had a $100 million question put in front of you,” SVP said. “I’d always try to be realistic about it, but when they stood up there and say it was done to grow the game – no you didn’t; you took the money, just be honest about it.”
What makes it worse, in SVP’s mind, is trying to understand what the guys who were offered a chance to join LIV Golf and DIDN’T take it must be feeling now that the PGA Tour did exactly what they told players not to do.
“If I’m a big-time star and I didn’t take LIV’s offer, I passed up real money that would’ve changed my life to stay loyal to a tour that just took the exact same money I’d have been taking – that’s insane!” SVP said. “Guys yesterday were like, how do we merge tours? In the grand scheme, I don’t think that tour’s mechanics will the way anything goes going forward.”
Listen to SVP’s entire call in to Sheehan above!
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